Re: Category

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@hotmail.com>]

> The taxonomy module[1] in RSS 1.0 was created to address this very 
> thing.  It is still of status "Proposed," left that way for a bit
> at the time to let folks fiddle with it and see how it sat with
> them.  I'm not sure why it's not moved forward.  Perhaps it's just
> silently being used and that works for folks.  Perhaps it proved
> overly/unnecessarily complex/large.

Rael, we've been discussing some ideas about this over in the syndic8 
mailing list here on yahoogroups.  We'd welcome the participation.

The sobering fact is that out of the 5000 feeds known to the 
syndic8.com database only ONE is using the taxo information.  There's 
about 50 that are including the taxo namespace header without any 
real use of it.

I'm not suggesting it's too complicated.  I'm simply stating the fact 
that no significant quantity of the feeds we've found are using it.

> I've always maintained there's much value in simply specifying a 
> category/subject path element.  We're all rather used to them.
> They're self-descriptive, informative as to how one categorizes
> one's content, and simple as pie.  We have XPATH, directory paths,
> URL-line paths, and Yahoo! directory paths.  Why not RSS subject
> paths?
> 
> Now these paths could be fully qualified (indicating a subject-
> sphere in an established taxonomy)...
>
> <dc:subject>http://dmoz.org/Home/Cooking/World_Cuisines/
> Asian/Indian/</dc:subject>
> 
> or ad-hoc 
>    <dc:subject>/cooking/recipes/aromatic/indian</dc:subject>
> 
> The proposed advantage of the ad-hoc style is that it's non
> restrictive so as to work with anyone's content management system
> or mindset and favours popularity of path-choices over
> standardization -- unused paths simply fade.

Right, one could just as easily present a heirarchy of their own and 
use it.

<dc:subject>http://my.space/books/current/anne%20rice</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>news:alt.books.anne-rice</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>news://my.server/alt.books.anne-rice</dc:subject>

> All told, I'd love to see some forward movement across RSS 
> implementations of something simple and agreeable like an RSS 0.9x 
> <subject> / RSS 1.0 <dc:subject> attribute (this already exists 
> in the RSS 1.0 Dublin Core module).

I'm with you up to a point.  Is the DC use of the 
appelation 'subject' a problem?  Being that the word 'subject' is 
more often associated with an e-mail address header line.  Or is this 
a syntax argument?  Is it possible for folks using the toolsets to 
grasp that this is 'dc:subject' not 'Subject:'?

-Bill Kearney